Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo [LWN.net]

Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo

Posted Feb 11, 2021 20:30 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo by Sesse
Parent article: Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo

If you think a global mutable state is a "simple thing" then you have a serious memory safety problem.

It took a very long wait, but in 2011 even C finally got a memory model that realizes concurrency has to be part of the language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C11_(C_standard_revision)

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Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo

Posted Feb 11, 2021 20:41 UTC (Thu) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link] (2 responses)

I think initializing a mutex should be simple thing!

I'm giving up this discussion; too many people are interested in arguing against strawmen, and too few people are interested in discussing the actual problem. It's pretty off-putting when a community's reaction to criticism is “who needs to do that anyway”.

Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo

Posted Feb 11, 2021 20:59 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> I think initializing a mutex should be simple thing!

And it is, mechanically. Semantically, it is *not* a simple thing. These kinds of issues are what Rust is aiming to tackle as a whole.

Could once_cell or lazy_static be added to the stdlib? Sure. Why not yet? Maybe the API isn't sufficiently nailed down, soundness cases considered, etc. enough for the stdlib. Until then, crates.io is a handy place for these things to mature *while getting real world (ab)use*.

Some context for the C++ side of things. Improvements living in some random P paper on the ISO C++ standard committee mailings isn't going to get battle-hardened by anyone other than the author without the heroic work of making it available on existing language specs (e.g., Eric Neibler's Ranges library). This kind of stuff is nigh impossible with language features too. There is still errata coming in for `for (auto i : expr)` for crying out loud because this is undefined behavior:

std::vector<std::string> func();
// ...
for (auto i : func()[0]) // oops, you're iterating on a temporary that just got destructed
{}

Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo

Posted Feb 11, 2021 21:58 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> I think initializing a mutex should be simple thing!
It's actually not. For example, on some systems mutexes can require a system call.